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Learn how to sound AMAZING playing your acoustic guitar percussively with this FREE Video/PDF

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Acoustic Guitar Tips And Articles

On this page you will find a variety of acoustic guitar tips and articles on how to play your acoustic guitar in the very best ways possible. Be sure to check these acoustic recources out and stop wasting time with a trial and error approach.

BRAND NEW! Playing fast solos on your guitar can seem very difficult to do, especially if you are a beginner to early intermediate guitar player. Today however, I am going to show you some very cool fingerpicking riffs that will be easy for you to play fast on your guitar, in a relatively short amount of time. The reason why it will be easier to play these riffs faster than others, is because of the consistency of the patterns both your picking and fretting hands will be doing throughout. These fingerpicking riffs work equally well played at medium and slow speeds too. So if you’re not interested in playing fast solos on your guitar, these riffs will still be very useful for your acoustic guitar soloing.

NEW! All guitarist’s play and/or are influenced by the style of blues in some way. It’s a great style, a lot of fun to jam, and great for establishing a great foundation from which to solo and improvise on your guitar. As great as blues is, it can sound predictable, and at some point you will be looking for something to spice things up a little. Today, in the second of a two part video/article series I am going to show you how to create blues riffs that are totally unique and amazing in sound. There is no magic scale being used here. In fact, it’s one of the most common scales that exists. However, the technique I am going to show you, will turn this scale, and the riffs you create from it, into something like you’ve never heard.

I bet you use the pentatonic scale all the time, and as great as it can sound, it can also become tiresome and boring to use when it’s all you know to do, or tend to do, when soloing. I am going to show you a very cool and unique technique that will become a game changer for your guitar soloing. You will be creating all sorts of awesome solos, and all the while you will be using the good old pentatonic scale, only with a couple of other magic ingredients!

NEW! The style of percussive guitar can be extremely challenging to play, however it doesn’t have to be. Simply learning a few basic percussive elements, and then combining these to play beats and grooves on your guitar is actually quite easy to do.

Taking these beats and grooves and adding them to a chord progression is not a stretch either, even if you just have basic skills right now.

Creating your own chord/melody arrangements on guitar, where you play the chords and melody of a song at the same time, is not so much a matter of having great skills, as it is having a great strategy and method in place in which to play this way. I did it the hard way by not having any strategy in place. It was time consuming and frustrating to say the least!

Let me save you that unnecessary pain. In an earlier lesson I revealed to you 3 critical mistakes guitarists make when trying to play chord/melody style. Now I want to add to that a further 4 equally critical mistakes guitarists make when playing chord/melody style. By simply avoiding these mistakes yourself, playing and creating chord/melody arrangements on your guitar will become easy and fun to do!

Yet it will be totally useless to you, in any real life capacity at least, if all you do is learn the basic pattern. There is much more to mastering a fingerpicking pattern such as this, that meets the eye. It is a multi step process, where most people stop after step 1, believing they have got it, yet are left frustrated, wondering why they are struggling to make anything that resembles real music with it on their guitar.

Ever tried creating and/or playing chord/melody arrangements on your guitar and failed miserably, finding it near impossible to play both the chords and melody of a song at the same time?

If you answered yes, you are definitely not alone!

It’s one of the most impressive and rewarding ways to play a guitar, but also one of the most challenging.

The great news is, you most likely don’t need to increase your guitar skills to play and create chord/melody arrangements, but rather avoid critical and common mistakes most guitar players make because they have no strategy or method in place when trying to play this style.

Ever wondered how your favourite players make fingerpicking their guitar look so easy to do?

Truth is, a lot of the time there is a lot less going on than what meets the eye, or in this case, the ear. While many patterns exist in the world of fingerpicking, there is one in particular that is more prevalent than any other.

This fingerpicking pattern will provide you with the ability to play literally thousands of songs, as well as create your own fingerpicking masterpieces!

If you are feeling unmotivated, uninspired, and just all round frustrated with your guitar playing right now, the great news is that times like these are often proceeded by your biggest growth and improvement as a player and musician!

Stuck in a rut with your acoustic guitar rhythm playing? It is very common to get caught up in a strum only approach when playing acoustic guitar. Truth is, given the right strategies and methods you can totally transform your acoustic rhythm guitar playing. You will have a new found freedom and even surprise yourself when you pick your guitar up to play.

Read this article on acoustic rhythm guitar and learn how to give your playing the makeover it needs so you never get bored with your own playing ever again!

When it comes to playing guitar it is often said that there is the EASY way to do it and then there is the RIGHT way. It is the same when fingerpicking your acoustic guitar. Don't fall into the trap of going with what comes natural to you when trying to learn this style of playing on your own. There is every chance you will be going about it the wrong way. Don't waste your time!

Think that having the music/tablature to a song plus a recording of it is enough to get that song down from start to finish?

Think again! Learning full songs on the guitar can be a massive frustration for many players. However it doesn't have to be. In order to learn the songs you love you must first have effective strategies in place to do this.

The rhythm and timing of a song tends to be something that many guitar players think will just happen by default once they have the notes and chords down. This is NOT true, and as a result it is the cause of many guitar playing problems and frustrations.

Part 2 of ways to inspire new found creativity and inspiration into your acoustic guitar playing. If you've ever felt like you have hit the wall with your guitar playing, and we all do, then check this article out where a further 3 ways are presented to you that will help reignite your creativity on the guitar.

When creating an unplugged version of an electric song on your acoustic guitar, you need to do more than simply copy the existing song, note for note, onto your acoustic. There are many things to consider and do to make your unplugged version sound awesome! The secret is to tap into the unique characteristics of the acoustic guitar, which in turn will provide you with ways to compensate for the electric guitar, and the other instruments in the song too, if you are playing solo (ie. just you and your guitar).

Chords are commonly associated with rhythm guitar playing. What is not so commonly known however, is that chords are also a great tool to use for soloing on your acoustic guitar. You may choose to use them a little, sprinkled amongst your single note lines, adding great depth and texture to your solos, or you may use them a lot, creating a full blown chord solo.

It’s up to you. One thing is for sure though, adding an element of chords to your guitar soloing will take your acoustic playing to great new heights.

You know the feeling. We’ve all been there as guitar players before. You’ve hit the wall and are running low on inspiration and motivation, maybe even contemplating quitting all together. Stop!

A great way to fuel your desire to play the guitar is to study the styles and techniques of your favourite players. This has helped me out of a flat spot many times and is a great way to expand and improve your own guitar playing in massively defining ways!

A great way to massively increase your creativity on the acoustic guitar is to transcribe music other instruments play. This will get you playing your acoustic in ways you would never have thought of, as all instruments are unique in how they sound and execute their notes. Great guitar players don't limit their listening and learning experiences to the guitar alone. They become great by listening carefully to other instruments, taking what they can and applying it to their own playing.

Do you purposely stick to standard tuning with everything you play on guitar, unwilling to try anything new, sighting that it’s too hard learning to play guitar in multiple tunings?

I mean, why go turn everything upside down by changing the tuning of your guitar.

This was my attitude in the early years of my playing, however I am so grateful I saw the light and discovered the magic of open tunings for my acoustic guitar playing.

Open tunings, or any kind of tuning for that matter, are designed to make things easier to play on guitar. In a lot of cases, things you can do in open tunings aren’t even possible to do in standard tuning.

I want to show you a technique for your acoustic guitar playing that totally blew me away when I first heard it. I couldn’t believe the sound I was hearing was actually coming from a guitar! This technique is commonly known as harp harmonics or cascading harmonics. Whatever you want to call them, these will change the way you approach your acoustic guitar playing from the day you first start learning them.

Knowing your open and bar chords is good. However if this is all you know when it comes to chords on your guitar then this is NOT good. In fact, it’s restricting your playing big time in ways you’re not even aware of!

Many years ago I had this problem myself. I was a decent guitar player however when it came to chords, my knowledge and application of them on the instrument was poor. Translated, this means I only really knew my open and bar chord forms.

Answer: They look outside of their chosen style of music for inspiration and ideas they can apply musically to their own genre and way of playing. This is a key ingredient to becoming a great guitar player!

In fact, if I did not do this myself, there would be many, many things I simply would not be able to do that I CAN thankfully do now, within my own style.

One of the great things about open tunings is the whole new sound spectrum that is available for your guitar playing.

One great beneficiary to open tunings are your chords. Whether it be the unfamiliar, but lush sound of the droning open strings against fretted notes, or the single fret bar chords that allow you to add extensions and embellishments not possible in standard tuning, open tunings will bring a whole new world of creativity to your guitar playing which can immediately take your playing to a much higher level.

In this video/article lesson I am going to show you a very cool, easy, yet advanced sounding way to fingerpick the blues on your acoustic guitar. This fingerpicking technique will have you playing both the rhythm and lead parts to your blues at the same time, much like a pianist provides both the chords (left hand) and melody (right hand) to the pieces they play.